


Only That Man Can Dance

by arienai



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Implications, M/M, Mind/Mood Altering Substances, Referenced VKaz, mutual dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 07:28:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10714956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arienai/pseuds/arienai
Summary: "Boss, did something bite you?"No. Not that you recall.When a lamb is lost in the mountains, it cries. Sometimes its mother comes. Sometimes the wolf.But you're a predator yourself, aren't you? Who comes for wolves?





	Only That Man Can Dance

**Author's Note:**

> Contains a minor reference to [The Enemy of My Enemy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8777215).

"Let's try that again."

A damp track of prickles sidewinds down your spine and into the collar of your leather sneaking suit at the gravelly rasp of that low voice. It chafes like the pebbles between your thickly calloused toes. It ~~always~~ comes from above. The sun stands blindingly behind him.

"Boss, you know who I am."

You shield your eyes; thick crusts fall away under your hot steel fingertips. You blink, focusing through them up at the navy blue sky. Ocelot. The word rattles around in your thick and dusty throat.

He removes the needle from your neck.

 

_Your head bobs, sways; it is the snake you saw the night she left, the one you caught in your fist and crushed, lolling up at the sky. Slack, boneless - no, not boneless, boned; not string, reinforced cable slipping through your fingers off the deck over the edge of Mother Base in a rainstorm._

_And the western sun is an oil fire on the ocean black sky, blazing fuel spilling circular around a crash site, brilliant red on mountainous midnight._

_You report this._

_"Snake? Are you feeling all right?"_

_You were aflame with it a minute ago; now your bones creak on stiff frozen sand. Isn't it strange how hot this country is during the day, compared to how cold it is at night?_

_"No, not really, Boss. It's very dry. Humidity modulates temperature. That's why the coldest and hottest temperatures on each continent are recorded far inland. The elevation is also high. Temperature drops about three degrees Fahrenheit for every thousand feet above sea level. It's called the lapse rate and it's tied to the expansion of air at lower pressures, further from the earth's gravitational pull."_

_But water gets colder under pressure, you say. You've felt it. Down, down, down past the crystalline layer you soothed your blistered heels in to the sound of girlish laughter and birdsong, to the cool respite of pitch dark suffocation. The sand gets warmer as you burrow your flesh fingers into it, though._

_"No, Boss, thermoclines are caused by--"_

_"Boss, are you fucking _high_?"_

 

Slender red fingers loop through your shoulder harness and drag you into the blissful shade. He abandons you there briefly to fetch water from the river that carved this overhang long ago, back when it must have been more frothing torrent and less burbling brook. Now when would that have been?

"The ice ages, I suppose." Even the way he limps is graceful. You wait for him to continue, but nothing comes.

The rhythmic rattle of insects keeps you company instead.

He returns to kneel beside you and to press a damp cloth to your forehead. It looks like slippery rust and feels like heaven; it smells like silk and gunpowder, and that's when you realize that it's the scarf he always wears. "Here, Boss. The last thing we need is you getting heat stroke, too."

You lay cool, muddy metal fingers over the old scars on his throat.

"A collar? No, unlike Miller, I prefer not to spend my days wallowing in a puddle of my own sweat."

 

_"Snake, just come back to the LZ. Please."_

_That sounds suspicious to you. Cloying. That voice should hiss and spit and snap at your heels until you run in the right direction. This isn't right. You don't trust it._

_A gunship's been stalking you for the better part of a day. At least, what you suppose has been a day; you remember the sun slipping below the hazy horizon only the once. It hasn't fired, but you've been very careful to wind your way through the rocks, out of sight. It hovers low - the whirwhirwhir of the flight deck at the end of a hard day's work, not the whine of the day's start or the loud roar that means you'll be summoned at a run, head tucked down, arms full of--_

_An angry hornet buzzes in your ear. You swat it away._

_"Snake, why not lie down awhile? Find someplace to hide and tuck in out of this heat. I'm sure the gunship'll get tired of searching and pass you by."_

_That voice is the soothing one. That voice you do trust. That voice speaks reason._

_A sigh through clenched teeth. "That's not a _gunsh_ \--"_

_"Boss, did something bite you?"_

_No. Not that you recall._

_"He doesn't need a differential diagnosis right now, Dr. John Wayne. He needs a medivac."_

_"Actually, if he is snakebit, it would help if we knew to bring the right--"_

_"Jesus Christ, did you just say 'snakebit'--"_

_Sometimes when the voices in your mind talk to you, it seems more like they're talking to each other. This is one of those times. It makes you feel uneasy to intrude on their private conversations. You paw them free from your head and set them gingerly down onto dry grass. They'll keep one another company._

_You creep free of them with one eye raised suspiciously to the sky while pitched words crackle behind you. Fade to distance, and the sound of humming._

 

Long minutes ease by. He sits a bodylength away from you, tucked under the same outcropping. Always so sure to keep his distance. Polite. Wouldn't want to intrude. You understand. The light shifts from bright white to cooler yellow. Shadows stretch. The scarf dries; you think he might have fallen asleep.

Until you cough hoarsely, and he drags himself back to his feet. "You must be thirsty, Boss."

You reach for an absent canteen. His is missing, too. "Oh, you ditched most of your gear a while back. Mine? Is up on the horse."

He feeds you water through his fingers. Cupped carefully - he's so careful - in his palms. It tastes like leather. It seems impossible that he slipped and tumbled down the same ravine you did, yet you remember him laying in the same heap, beside you. He knows best, you know. But he's only human. Just a man.

Boss, you know who I am.

He gently extracts his fingers from your mouth and goes to fetch water for himself.

"We should get out of here before sundown. The mosquitoes'll be out in force."

Malaria is endemic to Afghanistan. But you're sure that they've put you on a chemoprophylaxis regimen. It's in the shots they give you. Meflo or doxy?

"Both, I'm pretty sure."

That would explain a few things.

"Hm?" He hooks an arm under your shoulders and helps you to your feet. He's stronger than he looks. You can feel why; feel lean muscle flex and twine under flimsy cloth. "You've never had a bad reaction to it before."

It's not that - it's the combination of drugs - you explain, as he hauls you up a steep, shifting, sandy slope. Every yank slow and purposeful. Even so, he loses his place a few times. His heels don't have grip; he skids out and you have to catch him. In your arms he trembles with adrenaline and exhaustion. It is a long way down. And you are much heavier than he is. Still, it's not like him; though it is like the awkward teenager from the grainy photographs with his too-long limbs and perpetual sneer.

"Even monkeys fall from trees." This man has soft eyes and easy smiles.

Kaz taught you that phrase in Japanese once.

"That's close, Boss." He chuckles. He struggles to his feet again. Offers his hand. "But 'ki' is tree, in Japanese. Not 'kyo'. Ki is also the word for spirit, or energy - albeit written with a different character. It's believed to flow from the gut, rather than the heart."

By the time he's finished his lecture, you've crested the hill. D-Horse doesn't come when you whistle. Because it's his horse waiting for you, not yours.

 

_Under the bleached bone branches of a bare tree you come across a time-worn battle. No bristling nor growling; these predators are much too ancient for that, too dignified. A tawny saw-scaled viper decorated with black diamonds waltzes with a dusty tan scorpion in a stately circle around the freshly fallen corpse of a baby crow. Ants feast on its eyes and clamber down its throat, heedless._

_Neither willing to break the stalemate. Who would win, if they did? The viper? Even if its fangs aren't strong enough to penetrate the scorpion's exoskeleton it is surely large enough to wrap around it and crush it._

_But not without getting stung._

_Mutually assured destruction. Deterrence is an old policy, you inform them. Outdated. The product of a bygone era - the thing to do now is fight proxy wars. Fight asymmetrically: look, look, the ants are winning while you do nothing. Each one might be insignificant, easily defeated, but if you kill one ten more will take its place._

_They don't listen. You implore the voices to tell them to listen; confused as to why they don't respond._

_High noon comes and goes. The air is so hot it shimmers along the dirt road; your bootprints are wavy serpentine tracks. The chick is a desiccated husk bloated with insects._

_The viper strikes; breaks a claw; it is over in an instant. The tiny scorpion skitters away. It was all a bluff._

_You wasted your meal, viper. What were you so afraid of?_

_Now they'll both go hungry._

 

The routine act of mounting a horse has turned treacherous with the aching tremors of your injured limbs. He has to help you. You step on his shoulder and he grunts. He declines your offered hand and swings up himself, with effort. You place your hand lightly on his shoulder, sitting far back, just as you did in Dhekelia.

The first step nearly jolts you off the horse. Your head sloshes; your inner ear roiling in the heat, up is down, down is up, he has to catch you to keep you from falling.

"Here." He tucks your arms around his waist. Pulls you up tight against his back.

His shirt is soaked flat against his skin with the exertion of dragging you up out of the ravine. Yet he still smells good. Leather and gun oil and cologne, faintly. River water, strongly. He's washed, you realize then. Somehow he found time to wash in the river. He's so fastidious; it's endearing, in a way. The curl of lips and wrinkle of his nose in disgust as he douses you with a water pail back on the helipad. For once he resembles those photographs.

Not like Kaz. Kaz smells almost as badly as you do, sometimes. Goes about as long without showering. Tries to cover it up with deodorant which only adds a chemical tang to the stale sweat and hair grease. Sometimes, when he climbs into your lap fully erect and fully clothed, your hands come out stinking like latex from the last time you made love. Dark stains on his stomach and under his armpits.

Ocelot smells good.

"Thanks, Boss." Kindly enough to try to hide the way his nose wrinkles when you speak. You're so accustomed to it you hadn't given it a thought; you've been wearing black leather in the desert for days, haven't brushed your teeth for as long, you're so dehydrated your breath must reek like week-old garbage. Out of consideration, you stay silent.

The roll and buck of the horse's movements rocks you up against his back; your head lolls onto his shoulder, weary and nauseous. He takes care that you don't fall.

He smells good. Like cool, clear water, and you're ravenously thirsty. Beads of sweat drip from his brow, down his sharp nose and sharper cheekbones, trickle down the hollow curve of his scarred throat, and through the scant few pale hairs on his chest. The bare skin feels slippery, right down to his abdomen, which tenses and an intricate array of tiny muscles reveal themselves to your touch.

What if you pulled his knees up and--

" _Boss_." His voice is sweetly reprimanding. Mindful, but indulgent.

You pull your hand out of his shirt and distract yourself with his canteen.

 

_Grey-violet dusk has just arrived when you encounter the angry ghost of Sahelanthropus. At first you think it's the enormous machine's dead body, slumbering in graveyard silence, which you edge around respectfully. But when you're almost past it rears its head and screeches:_

_LANGUAGES ARE PARASITES. CIVILIZATIONS ARE THE HOSTS THAT THEY INFECT._

_You back away cautiously. It is a mad dog that needs to be put down. In its death throes. Yet rabid enough to take you down with it._

_Sahelanthropus pulls itself onto four limbs and you realize you were mistaken: the wrong machine, the wrong era. This is Peace Walker. Shambling toward you with jerking motions, ominous bobs of its huge carapace._

_THERE ARE NO SIDES, NO COUNTRIES, NO ALLIES OR ENEMIES. ONLY THE MISSION._

_You don't care, you confess. You don't care, you don't care. You feel guilty, but it's the truth. You don't care about politics or philosophy. These are nothing but ideas. You've saved and brought forth life with your bare hands. These are real. You're sorry to your enemy, you're sorry to your mentor, you wish you could have taken away their pain. In a way, you did. But you stopped looking back at them a long time ago. You don't care about their high-minded reasons for killing. All you care about is the future._

_THEN LET ME TELL YOU THE TRUTH._

_No, no, no. You were mistaken again. You've been tricked into thinking that was her voice, but it _isn't_. The machine you face isn't an upright man or a war dog, it is a much more ancient predator than that: it is the Shagohod, and it rolls forward on treads. You can faintly make out the crimson-backed hammer and sickle in the burgeoning darkness._

_No, you don't want to hear his truths._

_You'd rather run. Where is your sight? You should be able to see in the dark, but like the voices in your head, it's gone. You stumble over stones and scrape your shins against bushes while the Shagohod stirs to life behind you. Its shadow drips down from the moon and licks at your heels. No, no, no. You scramble up from your hands and knees while it booms:_

_I AM YOUR OLDEST--_

_And the ground falls out from under you._

 

He's pulled over - reigned in, rather - for you. So that you can wince and limp your way behind a boulder and fish your cock out from your suit. Like most military or protective ensembles meant to be worn around the clock, like a flight suit, it has a built-in feature to enable to you to relieve yourself without doffing the whole thing each time. Or shimming out of it, in your case, her boots braced against your shoulders while you writhe. It's nice to be able to piss without molting.

It's nice of him to give you privacy. It's not something you've come to expect from the other men you've fought with. He makes no complaint, even though it takes a while for your dick to get soft so you can get started.

You spend the time picking long grey hairs out of the joints of your mechanical hand.

When you zip up and stagger back to him you find his cloudy eyes on the distant horizon. On a vertical wall of blowing sand stained sun-red. You wonder why your iDroid didn't warn you about it.

"Boss, you ditched that with the rest of your kit days back." Indulgently.

But what about his? "Broke during the fall."

Ah.

Still, he seems strangely reluctant to find shelter for the night. He thinks you should press on. You'll never make it at this rate. Neither of you are in a condition to ride hard, and his horse isn't used to carrying two people. "You're in danger out here."

Pequod should come pick you-- "He can't. Don't you think I'd've done that already? Your soul-searching stroll took you within a mile of Bagram airfield. The MiGs'll blow him out of the sky if a hundred Hinds don't get there first."

Then how--"We arranged a landing zone in advance. It's a safe distance away."

But why--"I had to go incognito. Only Diamond Dog who'd survive getting caught out here."

That all makes sense. Kaz will be furious. That must be why he's in such a hurry. No, it must be the risk. He'd be thrilled to let Kaz stew in his anxiety. Though he's been in that pot so long he's starting to fray at the seams.

You ride on past the charred skeleton of an An-26. Its brittle wings are a field of glinting shrapnel; its fuselage hollowed out by Mujahideen scavengers until only the giant bones of the aircraft remain. Tan and camouflage, with a single red star. It looms so large the shadows it casts glide over the lines of his face.

The wind picks up, as you knew it would. You've been in the field here longer than any man has the right to. Dust comes with it. You misplaced your own shawl; he replaces his sunglasses and wraps your face in his damp, dirty scarf.

"Hm." He rests his chin on his knuckles. Flashes a boyish smile he never wore when he was a boy. "Have you ever seen The Ten Commandments?"

_Seen_ them? Thou shalt not-- "Never mind."

 

_You are a wounded animal, and you slither around the stones of a riverbank in fits and starts while scorpions skitter along the ridge above you, hissing to one another. They stink like gun oil and gasoline. Beady red eyes in pairs of one, three, eight. Your face and hands are soaked in mud; you are as dark and formless as the sky._

_You've rolled into a whole hive of them. They peer down from the sky, rake the ground with bright white talons. At first you think you'll slip past, but they're clever - the distant rumble of water pounding rock ahead promises a dead end._

_They've corned you._

_What are you so afraid of?_

_You don't know. You stay wound through the branches of a fallen log until one of them is foolhardy enough to reach for you._

_Я нашел его! Босс, возьми меня за руку--_

_It is over in an instant. You grab, snap, crush its pincer - twist it until the breaking point and tear half of it free. Droplets of blood patter against your face; you toss the severed limb into the river. The scorpion staggers backward, caught in the waiting claws of another._

_Pointed forelimbs close around you from behind. It rasps and rattles in your ear, but your hearing is gone along with your night eyes and the voices. You know you have seconds before it stings you, and you don't hesitate - you rip it off your back and hurl it to the ground as hard as you can. You hear the crunch of its shattered carapace; it writhes but doesn't rise._

_You burst forward with all the speed and strength you can muster and strike, strike, strike - snap poisoned tails in half and gouge out gleaming eyes. Before long you're coated in their ichor, and one of them, its own claws bloody, cries out for them to retreat._

_You're alone on a scale-strewn riverbank, matted with gore, and you stagger off into the night._

 

The wind-blown sand whips hard enough to score your skin before he'll admit that you need to stop and wait it out. You can no longer open your eyes against it; through the stuttering coughs you feel under his rib cage, you know that he can hardly breathe.

He leads you to a sheltered depression between two cliffs. There the locals have built a single-room hut out of the only materials available to them: mud and rock. The reed door hangs diagonally off its frame. It looks abandoned. Still, your old friend is ever-cautious: "You're in bad shape, Boss. I'll clear it. Go see if you can find anything useful in the yard."

You watch him stack up opposite the direction the door will open, hand on the revolver at his hip. You should be on the other side. He infiltrates like he's supposed to; with all possible haste and aggression. Somehow this, too, looks elegant when he does it. The way his hand rests against the door before he slams it open. The smoothness of his rapidly pivoting heels.

In the yard there's a rusted plow and a broken yoke. They must have fled before the Soviet invasion. Myriad flat, unbroken tracks lead out to a stone well, like a host of thirsty snakes. 

You drift back inside. He is in the middle of piling a bundle of musty old sheets in the corner, so that he can drape an arguably cleaner, dusty one over the sole bed. 

"A well? I'd steer clear of it, if I were you. We practiced a scorched earth policy early on. Chances are good it's poisoned."

We? Ah, right.

"Why don't you see if you can't cover up the windows? Storm'll skim this place for the most part, but I'd rather not wake up up to my eyeballs in sand."

Sounds reasonable. The inhabitants must have had a way. There's hardly any in here.

 

_One last scorpion unburrows from the riverbank. It hauls you down by the ankle with a bloodstained pincer. It's a big one, almost as big as you are. Faster than you are. You feel its stinger pierce your scales and scratch the surface of your skin; you wrench it free and toss it to the ground before the poison can sink in._

_It's slippery. It has so many more limbs. It sees every blow you try to land and slips away. It circles and weaves; trying to tire you out, and it's working. The heat from the toxin makes your eyelids heavy, and you stumble. Sink to your knees. It moves in for the kill._

_Boss, you know who I am._

_But he's not the only clever one. You're playing dead. He's in lunging distance, and you _strike_ , your red fist closed around its head and the weight of your body driving all the air out of its lungs. Coiled around it tightly._

_I know who you are._

 

By the time you've scrounged up sufficient cast-off furniture, mats, and ratty towels to board up the door and all the windows, he's prepared a bowl of warm water and soap for you. Unnecessary, but considerate. You should be out of range of the airfield's radar by tomorrow. It's not as if you haven't stripped the paint off the ACC with your stink before. 

He guides you to sit with a hand on your hip. Strips your sneaking suit off carefully, deliberately, piece by piece. His gaze falls everywhere except your eyes. When he kneels to pry your boots off you have full view of his chest and shoulders and the pounding of his pulse at his throat. 

He helps you wash up. Cleans out your injuries. Applies gauze. He hits the bowl with his knee; the warm water splashes over his pants and soaks through the fabric. He chuckles wryly. Takes it away. Sets it on the countertop. Washes and disinfects his gloves, back to you.

You rise to your feet. Peer over his shoulder. "Snake--"

Warm, relaxed, safe; it's difficult to keep your eyes open. You lay your head against his. He's opened a padded leather case; vials and syringes tucked securely inside.

"I figured it was a scorpion sting the moment you told me you didn't remember the bite. And if it'd been something you ate, you'd've been tossing it up." He unscrews the cap from one. Moves to draw fluid expertly with the syringe. You trap his hands.

"Several of the species in Afghanistan have psychoactive agents in their venom that can last for up to three days." He looks up at you. His pupils are narrow; a bead of sweat drips from the hollow of his throat. 

You strip off his sodden gloves.

 

_It can't escape. It tries. It struggles and lashes out and kicks, but you have its pincers pinned to the side of its body, on its back like this it can't use its tail, and you've crushed the rest of it down beneath your weight. Its keen eyes are wild. Time to hook your jaws around its throat?_

_Why were you so afraid of this?_

 

He's so flexible he can tuck his knees up against his body, heels caught on the edge of the counter.

 

_It feels like you could break him to pieces if you squeezed hard enough. The inside of his mouth is hot to the touch of your fangs._

 

"Boss, you're hurting me."

 

Your eye cracks open blearily, sleep-addled. You expect to squint against brilliant sunlight again; instead, night has fallen, and there is a new hole in your neck.

All you make out is his silhouette, seated in a chair by the door. You're flat on your back in the bed. The sheets are linen; they smell like mouldy grain. You raise your head, woozy - he's stripped off his soaked pants to hang them to dry. Long thighs and lean calves end in toes as shapely as his fingers. He's still wearing the rest of his clothing.

He glances in your direction, the corners of his eyes tight. "Did you know that anti-serums were originally used to fight bacterial infections? They - Behring and Kitasato - infected animals with tetanus and diphtheria. Drew their blood, isolated the antibodies in the serum, and injected them into a patient. Of course, now we use antibiotics, because--"

Serum sickness. A severe immune reaction in some patients to serum antigens, an unacceptably high risk compared to the relatively minor side effects of penicillin. 

"Right. It revolutionized the world at the time. Cut infant and child mortality drastically overnight. These days, though, all that remains of their method are--"

Anti-venoms. Used only when a bite or a sting could prove fatal. 

He spreads a gloved hand toward you, palm up. "Exactly."

There's more than enough room on this bed for two.

"One of us has to keep watch. And you're not well. Just rest, Boss. You'll be home tomorrow. Miller must be worried sick."

It's so rare to be alone with your dear friend, however. Seems like a wasted opportunity. He doesn't need to be stubborn. He doesn't need to coddle you. At the very least you could stay up and chat for a while, like you used to. Spend hours side by side in shirtsleeves, whispering breathlessly about the future. About old flames - well, yours. Not his. You could use his advice. Kaz'll never know what happened here.

"No one will ever know what happened here." He rests his chin on his knuckles pensively. He's begun to blink rapidly; that's not like him at all.

 

_No one will ever know what happened here._

_You can hear his heartbeat hammer against his ribcage; feel his breaths come in shorter and shorter gasps. His eyes are locked on your own, and they narrow ~~like they narrowed when he was pressed face-down on the linoleum~~ , with ice-blooded hate._

 

"Have you ever heard of courtly love?" No, and you don't really care, but you've never been able to stop him when he gets like this. Sometimes Kaz can; you're too respectful to interrupt. "A term used among the nobility in the Middle Ages, related to chivalry. A knight who swore fealty to his liege lord was to love him, yes, but he was expected to love his lord's wife, too. Under Christianity, they were one flesh, after all. Only, this had to be a platonic kind of love. They'd compose songs and poems, fight in her honor - it could be as pretty and romantic as you pleased, so long as it didn't cross the threshold into the bedroom."

Your thoughts aren't particularly chivalrous, at the moment. Not when he pads over on bare feet and it's a dire struggle to look anywhere but between his legs. He strokes a thumb tenderly across your brow, right up to the shrapnel.

"Go to sleep, Boss."

And your eye feels heavy. Your limbs feel leaden. Numb. You blink as rapidly as he had a moment ago to stay awake.

Easy enough, with his soft lips on your belly. 

Your breath catches; he's grinning up through a fringe of silver hairs with one side of his mouth. "Feel better?"

You're frozen in shock. You shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be doing this. But where did you think this was headed, when he stripped you and bathed you and holed up here all alone with you, off comms and off the radar. You've known for ages that he--

That he--

That gasp becomes a wheeze when he mouths over your soft cock. All those smooth hairs pool across your hips and you reach for his head to tuck them back over his ear only to find that you can't even raise your arms. "Ssh. I'll take good care of you." His lips are warm and wet and his breath is hot and damp; your cock twitches eagerly for him.

That's all he gives you, until you beg for more. Just fleeting pressure against your sensitive skin; the saliva that drips from his tongue. You plead for him to use it, and he does. Coats every corner of your rapidly hardening shaft in spit; lays it flat against your stomach with a gloved hand so he can coat the underside, too. Closes lips folded over teeth around one of your balls and sucks, sucks until it's painful, and your cock is weeping.

You ask for his mouth. He shakes his head. "I've got something better in mind." The low pitch of his voice rumbles in his throat against your cock.

He can't mean to-- oh, but he does.

He pulls sheets around his waist before he mounts your cock, an out of place gesture of modesty, but you have no complaints. Certainly no complaints. You're so used to the sensation being blunted, smoothed, covered, that the real stretch of his puckered rim against your beading tip surprises you, leaves you breathless. Skin on skin; you're really going to feel him from the inside; you have to protest: "You don't need those with me, Boss."

He engulfs you. Your eye rolls back. He's ~~always~~ so tight. He feels molten; all those muscles in his temptingly narrow waist stand out starkly, and you want to touch them. Squeeze his thighs. Hook his knees over your shoulders while he squirms to accommodate you.

He sinks back on his heels instead, and all you can do is sigh. Let him adjust. You risk a glance up at his face; he's still smiling.

What were both of you so afraid of?

He feels _good_. He rocks rhythmically forward. Slow, deliberate, taking his time. So like him. You don't mind. It doesn't have to be scrabbling, desperate, grunting, the scrape of an unshaven cheek against yours.

Why haven't you done this before? You exhale contentedly, scarcely able to summon the strength to touch his tensing knees. Stroke the stream of sweat trickling down from his navel through the hollow of his muscles to his pubic hair. You pull the sheets apart far enough to see that some of those are still blond before he stops you. Leans forward, presses your hands flat. Smiles out the other side of his mouth. From this angle the cloth-covered tip of his own slick erection bumps against your belly. 

"You know why, Boss." But don't worry - he won't tell. You won't tell.

You push back against him as best you can. He tilts his head to the side, eyes suddenly slitted, lips parted, and his hips speed up. He wets them - leans down and wets yours - pupils wide and glassy with pleasure.

The sensation of his meltingly soft tongue sliding into your mouth right to the back of your throat while you swallow his ecstatic sigh causes the heat to flood to your cock; all your muscles tense painfully and your balls pull up - that sweet release boils over into his slick insides.

You're sorry. You're in no shape for this. He pays you no heed. Keeps riding your still-throbbing, still-dripping dick and you hope he can get off before you soften.

Only you don't.

"I-it's the venom... Boss..." So rare to hear him stutter. To have to catch his breath. It's intoxicatingly arousing; at least, it will be. In a few minutes. Right now it's oddly uncomfortable. Like wearing wet socks under your boots. Running another mile after a thirty-minute break. Wrenching cooled muscles back into activity. 

He doesn't seem to mind. He's luxuriating in the sensation, still shifting so slowly, so invitingly, gradually increasing in pitch and volume and this eventually gets you ready again, primes you to enjoy it; if you had the strength you'd grab his hips and roll him over and watch his head jerk in time with your thrusts ~~against the sand.~~

He slumps bonelessly against your shoulder, panting, and drips semen into your pubic hair.

You groan. You just got into it again. When he rolls off of you you're not sure you'll have the energy to do more than hump the mattress. 

"Go ahead." Wet lips flick over your ear lobe. "I don't mind."

He lets you use his body to get off. Without complaint. Even clenches for you and rolls his hips for you and by the time you've filled him up again his lips are stained dark red and his eyes are hungry.

You're starting to get the idea of what he has in mind.

"No, Boss? Surely not." He doesn't stop. His nails bite into your skin and so much sweat pools between the two of you that it drips between your thighs and through the crack of your asscheeks. His knees have dug red welts into your sides. The sheet and your stomach is overflowing with his come and he's so full of yours that you can hear it when he raises and lowers himself on your cock. Feel it ooze down. "I know this is what you want."

Your dick is getting rubbed raw, and it _hurts_. You grunt when he clenches; there's not enough lubrication, your body's still responding to it regardless. To the sight of him, stripped down and eager and letting you touch him exactly how you think about touching him whenever he stands within armslength. 

You squirm and writhe with discomfort; he grins with both sides of his mouth. Fucks you harder, and harder. His eyes are narrow and sharp and clear as glass and the small of your back arches right off the bed while he holds you down.

"What's the matter, Snake?" You can't take it anymore. You blow another load inside that punishing heat - just a trickle, you don't have any more to give - and try to pull away. "You're done?"

You nod vigorously. "I'm not." 

You whimper with pain when he pulls off of your cock. Just sits up on his knees; cold air slices that aching organ, just long enough for some of the come to dry and you _howl_ when he lowers himself back down and your raw, overused skin stretches and scrapes on the way back into his dripping, too-tight hole. He kisses your cheek. "No, Boss?"

_No_. "Suits me fine."

He pulls off again and you sob - for the first time, not trusting him. But he moves those hips back, away, between your legs instead, and you choke with relief. 

He parts your thighs and hooks your knees up around his shoulders. Bites the corner of his tongue as he probes you open with his tip in a way you'd find endearing, in any other circumstance. Still do, faintly. Your cock twitches and you moan in protest - no more. His head's so thick that when he breaches you with it your toes curl; it's dry, and it stings, but you'll take it. Anything but that, again. His cock's as long as the rest of him - when you're sure he's seated fully inside you he leans forward with a heady gasp, adds a few more inches. 

Been a while since you've done this. Hurts a little. You know you'll be sore.

You still like it as much as ever. 

He's still nothing like Kaz; never disappears inside his own head. His eyes are locked on yours and his mouth covers yours and he observes the way you react to every thrust, responding cleverly. With a sharp bite here; a thumb on your nipple there. Heat builds in your belly and while you know you won't come again - not before he does - your prostate's swollen for the tip pulsing up against it.

He smirks. Playfully? He pulls his cock out and you whimper again, for an entirely different reason.

He starts cleaning you up with his tongue. First your stomach and chest, with long laps and hard probes. Then your cock; your eye goes wide in surprise and the anticipation of pain. But it's feather light. His throat thickens enticingly when he swallows. He works down, tonguing and teething the salty, frothy mess out of your hair. From around your sack. From around your rim, gentle, moist pressure--

God, please. Please. 

"Anything you say, Boss." You wrap your legs around him eagerly as he breaches you with his cock again.

 

Your mouth is dry when you awaken, soaked with sweat. You're twined haphazardly up in stained sheets, naked. You know before you roll over that your cock is stiff; that you've leaked some clear fluid over your abdomen.

He's still sitting by the door, pretending not to notice. But even the most poker-faced man couldn't hide the flush your old friend now has in his cheeks; embarrassed for the both of you. He was right to be reluctant - this isn't good for either of you, being alone together. With luck he'll have thought you dreamt of Kaz, but your old friend has never been slow on the uptake.

"If you're feeling all right, we'll press on." He thankfully leaves you alone to change. Ostensibly to saddle his horse.

He's cleaned your clothing for you and readied your equipment. The suit still stinks, faintly; you're not sure it ever won't. Luckily the locals have left some clothing in their haste to flee; soft cotton feels better against your heated skin. 

You're halfway through jerking yourself to a quick and dirty release when you notice a copy of the Quran marked with rust brown fingerprints. You close your eyes. 

You toss your stained sheets down on top of old bloody ones before you leave.

He's there, waiting. Already on his horse. The clear morning sun isn't kind to him; he looks older than he is. Tired. You were the one who made him stay up all night, though.

You swing up behind him with a hand on his hip and he inhales sharply. Pulls away. You hike up his shirt enough to see a deep black thumb-shaped bruise before he yanks it back down.

The two of you stare at one another a while.

You slide backward on the horse and cling to his shoulder, lightly. 

On the way home you pass a half-eaten viper under a bone dry tree.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to GRAYXOF for the fucky voce art that inspired this, and to mango for the undying voce thirst and post-hoc beta read.
> 
> The title's from Cormac McCarthy's _Blood Meridian_ , which this unashamedly emulates in theme and I can only hope there's a sufficient amount of gay dubcon to compensate for all the punctuation, sir.
> 
>  
> 
> _Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen the horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance._


End file.
